Medicare Providers Will Soon Enroll Online
As Medicare tries to become more effective, efficient and streamlined, eliminating paperwork and unnecessary time, the Centers for Medicare and Medicare Services has planned an online system to help providers enroll to be providers. This system will be available to most states in early 2009, and will also be available in California, New York and Missouri by October 2009.
Not all enrollment materials will be available on the web-based system, however there will be enough to get the process started and move it along more quickly than the old system. In the past it took 90 days – and sometimes much longer – for a provider to complete the enrollment process. With the new online process, it is estimated that it will take 30 to 45 days instead.
One drawback that providers are talking about is the fact that since the system will not recognize online signatures, the online paperwork must be followed by actual paper forms with original signatures sent to employees at CMS who process the paperwork and combine the files. Providers are skeptical about this, as they feel it will continue to take more time, however, CMS says that they can be working on everything in the computer so that the process goes quickly and the original signatures on paper will simply be verified, not re-processed.
Another drawback according to providers is that each provider who wants to enroll as a Medicare provider must enroll in a separate and different system first. The second system is called the Individuals Authorized to Access CMS Computer Services. Providers see this as an extra and cumbersome step and wonder why there cannot be one system that can deal with all of the hoops they must jump through in one complete system.
In addition, providers are skeptical because there have been promises to speed up the enrollment system for quite some time, and this particular system was supposed to be up and running by March, 2008, according to CMS, making the debut over six months late.
Regardless of how the providers feel about some of the issues inherent in the debut of the new system, one thing is true: there is the potential to enroll providers more quickly and the potential to add further services for providers including billing, budgeting, records and more in the future.
For now, we can all wait and see how the system works and if it saves time and expense for CMS, Medicare, providers, as well as Medicare recipients.
